Urgent Debates — SIS—Report on Release of Information

I have received letters from Dr Russel Norman, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and Andrew Little seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security into the release of information by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service in July and August 2011. This is a particular case of recent occurrence—the inspector-general’s report was released today—and it does involve ministerial responsibility. Dr Norman’s application was received first. I therefore call on Dr Norman to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. No one is contesting your decision, of course, but could I ask you what time of the day you received Dr Norman’s request, because if it was before the report’s release at 10 a.m.—

Order! The member has asked a fair question. If he will resume his seat, I will give him the answer. Dr Norman’s request was received at 6 minutes past 10, the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ was received at 8 minutes past 10, and Mr Little’s was received at 8 and a half minutes past 10. I therefore call on Dr Russel Norman.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. The issue before us today could not be graver. The issue is that the Prime Minister is using the security services to smear his political opponents. It could not be a graver issue. We have had to deal with the issue of previous Ministers who have interfered in police investigations of National Party donors. That was another occasion on which we had an urgent debate in this House—another terrible occasion for our democracy. But today—

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: Ha, ha!

—and Steven Joyce laughs about that occasion. On that occasion it was a Minister of the Crown interfering in a police investigation for a National Party donor. It was a shocking event. Anyone who knows anything about what happened will know that it was a shocking event. Maurice Williamson did a terrible thing. On this occasion we have the Prime Minister’s office using the security services to smear his political opponents. It is hard, really, to find the words to describe how damaging this is for our democracy when the Prime Minister himself is using the security services to smear a political opponent. It is an extremely dark day for our democracy. It is extremely damaging to our democracy when the Prime Minister uses the SIS in this manner.

What the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security found was that the Prime Minister’s former deputy chief of staff Phil de Joux got a briefing from the SIS regarding Mr Goff. He used that information to talk to Jason Ede, who was also the Prime Minister’s staffer. Jason Ede then rang up Cameron Slater, who is an attack blogger and is one of John Key’s friends. That attack blogger, Cameron Slater, then did an Official Information Act request while he was on the phone to Jason Ede in order to get the information. So the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff was using information he received in a security briefing in order to smear Mr Goff, who was at that time the Leader of the Opposition. That is what the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has found in her report today. It could hardly be more serious for our democracy when the Prime Minister abuses his access to security information in order to smear his political opponents, but that is exactly what is in the inspector-general’s report.

The report vindicates one of the central claims of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, which was released during the election campaign. At the time the Prime Minister said these were baseless allegations. In fact, the inspector-general’s report has found that one of the central claims in Nicky Hager’s book was true. That was the claim that the Prime Minister runs a “dark ops” operation—whatever you want to call it—a “dirty politics” operation out of his office, that is, through Jason Ede and now, it turns out, Phil de Joux as well, who was the deputy chief of staff of the Prime Minister. They ran that operation out of the Prime Minister’s office and had no boundaries in their abuse of power in order to smear their political opponents. On this occasion what the Prime Minister’s office did—

💬 Hon Bill English: Say it like you mean it.

Mr English?

💬 Hon Bill English: Say it like you mean it.

It is true, Mr English, and you know it is true. It is in the inspector-general’s own report that the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff received a briefing from the security services and told Mr Ede about the briefing. Mr Ede then contacted Mr Slater, and while they were on the phone Mr Slater put in the Official Information Act request for the report. Those are the facts in the inspector-general’s report. And what those facts show is that the Prime Minister of New Zealand is abusing his power in order to use the security agencies to smear his political opponents. It is an extremely dark day in our democracy. The Prime Minister should step aside. There should be a royal commission of investigation into what is going on inside the Prime Minister’s office when we have a Prime Minister who is abusing his access to security briefings.

Perhaps one of the other really disturbing elements of this is the politicisation of the SIS. The SIS, in fact, has certain limits in its Act, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act. It is not supposed to actually support, or get in the way of, political parties. Yet the verbatim conversations between the director of the SIS, Warren Tucker, and Mr de Joux, who was the deputy chief of staff, show that Mr Tucker was overtly party political and was trying to stop members of the Opposition from criticising the SIS and the Government of the day. Annette King gets a special mention in the report because she dared to criticise the Government of the day, so Warren Tucker said: “Well, we have to try to stop that, don’t we?”.

What we have seen is that the SIS has now intervened in two consecutive elections on behalf of the National Party. In 2011 Warren Tucker helped the National Party to attack Phil Goff. In 2014 the new director, Rebecca Kitteridge, amazingly, in the middle of an election campaign, put out a statement defending the Prime Minister’s handling of this exact issue—of this exact issue—in which the Prime Minister has been found to be acting in a way that is undermining our fundamental principles of our democracy. The Prime Minister used the Security Intelligence Service in order to smear Phil Goff. It was a shocking—a shocking—abuse of power.

The Prime Minister today in question time bounced around here and there, trying to avoid responsibility for the actions in his office. The Prime Minister cannot have it both ways. Either he knew, or had wilful ignorance of, what was going on in his office, or he did not—he was completely out of control and he did not know what was going on in his own Prime Minister’s office. It is one or the other. Which is it? Is it that he knew, and approved of, what Jason Ede and Phil de Joux were doing, which was using the information from the security services to smear political opponents? Or was he so out of touch with his office—so out of control of the Prime Minister’s office—that he did not know what was going on? Phil de Joux, Jason Ede, Cameron Slater—I mean, he just did not know what was going on.

💬 Hon David Parker: He used to phone Cameron Slater.

That is right. That is right, Mr Parker. He would phone Cameron Slater. Remember, John Key is at both ends of this. He would phone and talk to Cameron Slater directly. He did not rely on just Jason Ede to work with Cameron Slater; he did it himself, directly, in order to help Cameron Slater use security information to attack Phil Goff, who was Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister of New Zealand was assisting Cameron Slater to help him attack Phil Goff, who was Leader of the Opposition. The office of the Prime Minister of New Zealand was accessing information from the security services in order to pass it on to an attack blogger to attack the Leader of the Opposition. And Warren Tucker, in a disgraceful act, I mean a truly disgraceful act—the conversation between Warren Tucker and Phil de Joux, in the inspector-general’s report, is really disgraceful, where it is clear that Warren Tucker identifies with the Government of the day and is out to help it undermine the Labour Party. I know that Phil Goff has treated Warren Tucker in a very respectful manner over many years—I have seen it myself—and I think it is a shameful thing that Warren Tucker has done and I think what Phil De Joux did is shameful for our democracy as well.

The Prime Minister says that he did not know anything about this. That is his essential line. It simply defies belief that in the Prime Minister’s office the deputy chief of staff was running his own “black ops” operations. That is what the Prime Minister is asking us to believe. He is asking us to believe that the deputy chief of staff—of his own volition, independently and completely to the ignorance of the Prime Minister—was working with Jason Ede to contact Cameron Slater to leak information from the security services to an attack blogger in order to attack the Labour Party. That is what the Prime Minister is asking us to believe: he had no knowledge of any of this. Jason Ede broke into the Labour Party database without permission, where there were credit card records, all range of private records kept—Jason Ede broke in there, but, oh, the Prime Minister knew nothing of this. The Prime Minister knew nothing of the fact that his deputy chief of staff, Phil de Joux, was passing on information that he had received as a briefing from the Security Intelligence Service. The Prime Minister did not know that his deputy chief of staff was doing this.

That is what the National Party is asking New Zealanders to believe and it is what we saw from the Prime Minister’s absolutely disgraceful performance in question time today. He tried to tell us that black is white, war is peace, and ignorance is strength. He tried to tell us that the inspector-general’s report said no such thing and that it did not implicate his staff, when the inspector-generals’ report is absolutely black and white that the Prime Minister’s office was completely involved in this and had full knowledge of what was going on. We saw the Prime Minister’s disgraceful performance where he tried to say that the inspector-general said that black is white, where he tried to say that he could not have possibly have known what was going on. The Prime Minister knew. That is the truth. The despicable truth is that the Prime Minister knew. That is the reality of this situation.

All of us in New Zealand now have to face this thing. We think ourselves as having clean, honest politics. Well, we do not. I am sorry, but it is not true. The Prime Minister knew that his deputy chief of staff was colluding with Cameron Slater to pass on the security information briefing in order to attack Phil Goff. That is the sad truth. It is a corruption of our political process. That is the truth. It is a sad day, but it is time that we faced up to it. John Key is not the smiling nice guy that people like to think he is. John Key is not the smiling nice guy that he presents to the public. The truth is that he is operating an attack politics regime using his access to the Security Intelligence Service to attack the Labour Party. That is the actual truth because it is in the inspector-general’s report. I would challenge anybody who is watching or listening to this to go and read the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, because that is exactly what it says.

It is a dark day and it is time for John Key, for the good of the country, to step aside. He is not fit for the job. He is not fit. He does not have the ethical standards. He has the ethical standards of a junkyard dog. That is the truth of it.

💬 Hon Bill English: Oh, God.

That is the truth of it and Bill English knows it is true. It is true, Bill, and you know it. What the Prime Minister has done is unacceptable for our democracy. The Prime Minister knew what Phil de Joux was doing. He knew what Jason Ede was doing. He knew what Cameron Slater was doing. They were using security information to smear the political opposition, and that is wrong in a democracy. It is wrong of a New Zealand Prime Minister. John Key should step aside. There should be a royal commission of inquiry into what has been going on on the ninth floor of the Beehive and in the Prime Minister’s office.

As this has gone on, one of the things that I think is really damaging for our reputation as a clean politics country has been the Prime Minister’s denials. Nobody is perfect. The Prime Minister’s comments, where he says that everyone makes mistakes—OK, everyone makes mistakes, but when you have an inspector-general’s report that comes out and documents the role of the deputy chief of staff of the Prime Minister and ministerial staffers in organising this kind of attack politics, it is time for the Prime Minister to admit that mistakes were made, that he has made mistakes, and that it was wrong to use security information to attack and smear the political Opposition. When that does not happen—and what we saw in Parliament today was a disgraceful episode, when the Prime Minister refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing whatsoever—then it really corrodes our reputation for honest politics, it corrodes our reputation for running a clean democracy, and it corrodes the reputation of the National Party.

It is not like the National Party has always been like this. It has not. Let us remember it was the National Party that introduced the Official Information Act. Fair enough. Muldoon did that. I mean, it is worth remembering how far we have come with the National Party since we had Robert Muldoon. I mean, you know, Robert Muldoon had a lot of problems—do not get me wrong—but Muldoon introduced the Official Information Act. John Key is systematically undermining the Official Information Act by, essentially, blocking all requests for information, except for when it comes from Cameron Slater, and then he gets it in a matter of days or minutes. So how far has the National Party come? It was not always like this. There was a time when the National Party stood for something. There was a time when the National Party could stand up with integrity and say: “We’ve done some good things for New Zealand. You might not agree with us all of the time and maybe there are some things you disagree with.”, and obviously we would have the debate.

But this is of a different order to that. This is an entirely different order. This is a Prime Minister abusing his office—abusing his access to the Security Intelligence Service—in order to smear his political opponents. This is a different kind of a thing. This is almost beyond politics. This is about the kind of country we want to have. The National Party needs to look at itself in the mirror and say to itself: “Is this really the kind of party we want to become?”. Mr Speaker, is this really the kind of National Party that you signed up to?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Is this really the kind of National Party that should be a responsible Government, about which people can say: “Yes, we might disagree with it about this or that, but it basically has integrity.”? When the Prime Minister has denied all wrongdoing, he has stepped over a line. He has stepped over a line. He should step down, step aside, and let a royal commission of inquiry look into what he has been doing. I think that when all is said and done, it will really be up to the National Party caucus—those who are here in this House today—and others to look at themselves and ask: “Is this how we want to finish our third term in Parliament, with this kind of cloud hanging over us?”. It is unacceptable. It needs to change. The Prime Minister needs to step aside.

Can I start by utterly refuting the allegations made by the Greens. I mean, the Greens asked for the inquiry, and now they are very disappointed that it has not proven their case. The Green Party is a political movement that was party to the large-scale stealing of emails published in a book 6 weeks before an election—

💬 Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at the allegation that the Green Party was involved in the theft of emails. I seek a withdrawal—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. We have just had a very robust contribution with a number of allegations from the member’s co-leader. The Minister has every right to respond.

💬 Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh point of order?

💬 Metiria Turei: I am just—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh—

💬 Metiria Turei: Yes.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Then I will hear it.

💬 Metiria Turei: Is it now your ruling that when a member takes offence, you will not treat that as it has been treated in the past, which is that the integrity of the member taking offence is considered sacrosanct and a withdrawal and apology is always required? Are you reversing that many-decades-long ruling?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: That is not the ruling. If offence is taken and I consider that there is a reason for offence to be taken, I will immediately ask for that to be responded to. But in this case, there was a very robust debate. A very robust number of allegations were made by the previous speaker, Dr Russel Norman, and the Minister has every right to respond to those. And I did ask the member whether she was raising a fresh point of order. She has, effectively, relitigated the ruling I have already made.

Well, the public will draw their own conclusions about the involvement of the Greens prior to the 2014 election; an involvement we are now grateful for, as it helped to get the Government re-elected because of the excessive stupidity of the allegations made at the time. I thought that those members would have learnt.

The fact is that John Key, as Prime Minister, runs the most open, most transparent Government that New Zealand has seen, and particularly in respect of the intelligence services. He has taken on the job that others did not take on—that is, of bringing transparency and thoroughness to the operation of our intelligence services. [Interruption]

Well, I had some experience of working with the previous Labour Government as Leader of the Opposition, and I am not going to bother Parliament with some of the twists and turns of that experience. But what I can tell you now is that Helen Clark would never have had an inspector-general scrutinise the phone records, emails, and correspondence of the SIS. That was never ever contemplated. John Key has put that in place, with the assistance of the Attorney-General, and that is why we have this report here today. The Greens asked for the report and, because it came to conclusions that did not suit their conspiracy theory, they now effectively reject the findings of the report.

So let us just see what those findings were that the inspector-general found. The New Zealand SIS disclosed incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading information to the Prime Minister and his office, and, in that sense, the same misleading and inaccurate information was also disclosed under the Official Information Act to the said Cameron Slater. The information that was disclosed by a member of the staff did not breach any obligations of confidentiality owed to the New Zealand SIS.

This is the most objectionable part of Russel Norman’s speech: he led this Parliament to believe that, somehow, people in the Prime Minister’s office used information to which they had privileged access to smear their political opponents, and that is wrong—that is wrong. Remember what the information was. Phil Goff, having started all this by accusing the New Zealand SIS of not doing its job over the Israeli services, said that he had been briefed by the SIS, and the SIS, for various reasons, believed that he had been briefed. That was the information—that was the information. The SIS said—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: No, no—precisely—that is what the inspector-general found. It was the man you said had integrity who lacked professionalism.

Well, the Prime Minister’s office set out to establish whether the Leader of the Opposition had been briefed, and it was advised by the SIS several times—from being checked several times—that he had been briefed. The inspector-general makes it quite clear that that piece of information and the documentation around the briefing was suitably declassified. There was no privileged access to the information.

In fact, Phil Goff had broadcast precisely that piece of information. He had said publicly: “I was briefed.” It was not a secret. It was not some kind of classified, highly secret bit of information. The Prime Minister’s office was verifying that information. That is why Russel Norman’s speech was so wrong. He was trying to conjure up some kind of Soviet-style system where the secret information held by the SIS was used to smear people. The inspector-general’s report makes it absolutely clear that that did not happen. The Greens should stop misrepresenting the inspector-general’s report. It says that the Prime Minister’s involvement in the events was limited to a briefing given to him by the director by phone on 22 July, and media comments by him published on 24 July, 4 August, and 6 August.

This is an inspector-general who had access to every phone call, every document, every classified item, and it was an investigation into the activities of our intelligence agencies of a sort that has never been carried out before. That has never happened before. And despite his having access to every piece of information possible, the inspector-general came to the conclusion that the Prime Minister was not doing what the Opposition said he was doing—that is, the Opposition’s allegations were simply wrong and do not stand up to scrutiny.

The report is pretty tough on the former director of the New Zealand SIS. There is no doubt about that. He has made a public comment about his regrets for the misjudgments he made.

💬 Andrew Little: Where’s the apology?

Well, the member accuses him of political motivation. What the inspector-general says is precisely that that was not found—precisely that it was not found. That will not stop the Labour Party from claiming it is the case—it will not stop the Labour Party. We know that because it did not stop the Labour Party members leaking the findings of the report yesterday. It did not stop them doing that.

Let me just read something out. Let me just read out the confidentiality order: “Pursuant to those provisions, and in order to ensure the integrity of this inquiry, … you are required until further notice from the inspector-general to keep confidential the following matters: … Questions … Requests for documents … Information provided to the witness … Failure to comply with this order is an offence … ”. OK? So when are they going to own up? When are they going to own up? Oh, so Mr Goff said in the House today—[Interruption] No, listen to what Mr Goff said in the House today: “No one has seen a copy of the report.” OK—this is the man who leaked the confidential notes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials in 2005 in a discussion with the Leader of the Opposition. This is a man who was the recipient of large-scale leaks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade last year. This is the man who leaked the findings of this report yesterday, in direct breach of the confidentiality order that he signed, which states that it is an offence to leak it. So why would the public believe anything that Labour members say about this report?

This is the confidentiality order, and on the bottom it says: “Received and acknowledged”. That is, when you give evidence you sign it to say that you acknowledge that you are under a confidentiality order and that you acknowledge that it will be an offence if you breach it. Despite his personally acknowledging that, he leaked it. And we are meant to believe what the Labour Party says about the conclusions of this report—the political party that specialises in smears.

Do you know what? It is much worse with its own people than it is with its opponents. That is why Phil Goff leaked it yesterday—because it was Andrew Little’s first day. He made a good start as a Leader of the Opposition, and, in fact, it was probably worrying Phil Goff about what a good start he had made. So yesterday was the day that Phil Goff chose to leak, in breach of the law and his personal undertaking, the findings of this report—first, to spoil Andrew Little’s day, and, secondly, to try to get his own spin on a report that did not meet his expectations.

The findings of the report are pretty straightforward. The criticism is all aimed at the SIS. It makes it quite clear that the SIS made all of its decisions by itself, on its own merits, and, in doing so, made some significant misjudgments. I think that is pretty clear from the report. This is about events from 3 years ago. Since then, as my colleagues can explain, the SIS has been going through a significant overhaul, because the way in which it did handle it did not meet the standards that should be met by the SIS in pursuing its statutory obligations. That criticism is accepted by the SIS and it is accepted by the Government.

In the 3 years since then, as I indicated earlier on in my speech, this Prime Minister has introduced more oversight—considerable oversight—that led to a report this thorough, which is unprecedented. And, actually, the SIS is going through a significant review of its own functioning, its own resourcing, so that it can deliver what New Zealanders expect—that is, protection from some very real threats.

I do not think there is much doubt about the conclusions of the report. The only doubt is whether the Labour Party is going to own up to leaking it and whether the Greens are possibly going to be able to let go of their vindictive hatred of the Prime Minister. Certainly, nothing in this report backs up their awful allegations.

What a disappointing contribution to what is the most serious issue this House will have debated in many, many years. Russel Norman said that today was a dark day. There has been a darker day in New Zealand politics. It was 25 July 2011, when the disgraceful, filthy, dirty tactics of that Government and the Prime Minister’s office came to the fore in the actions that were about misleading and deceiving the New Zealand public.

Mr English was happy to read from the executive summary of this report. He clearly has not got into the recommendations. He says that this has nothing to do with politics and the lack of political neutrality, but that is exactly what it is about. You only have to look at recommendations Nos 3 and 5, which is that the SIS now has to go and get advice on how to act politically neutrally. This report highlights just what a disgraceful level of conduct this Government and the presiding Minister, the Prime Minister, have over this department. It is shocking.

New Zealanders, many of whom have had great respect for this Government, will tonight, when they watch the news, be coming to terms with the fact that this is a Government that does not know the boundaries between politics and political opportunism and the requirements of keeping a safe, steady hand on the levers of State. The Government has lost the boundaries. It does not know what the boundaries are. This report is very clear. If nobody knows what the central failing act was on the part of the Prime Minister and his staff, let us have a look at the report.

According to paragraph 218 of the report, on 25 July, when the information was being exchanged—have a look at this. On the same day Mr de Joux, the Prime Minister’s deputy chief of staff, when he had the information from the SIS: “On the same day, Mr de Joux provided that information to Mr Ede”—who had no security clearance and was not entitled to the information—“with a suggestion that it might prompt an OIA request for those documents. Mr Ede then provided that same information to Mr Slater”. This is John Key’s friend Mr Slater, with whom he is in regular contact. Mr Ede then “discussed the terms of the OIA request with Mr Slater and provided Mr Slater with draft blog posts concerning the issue.” It was all run out of the Prime Minister’s office. All the allegations of Nicky Hager in Dirty Politics are verified and vindicated in the report. The Prime Minister presided over the dirtiest, filthiest, grubbiest, vilest operation we have ever seen in New Zealand politics today—and the Deputy Prime Minister sits there and laughs and giggles.

Do you know what was most disappointing about Mr English’s speech? He actually came up smelling of roses during the election campaign. He was the only National MP who, when Dirty Politics hit the headlines—when John Key spun out of control, calling it our left-wing conspiracy—had the integrity and the honesty to say he did not approve of that conduct. He knew it was happening—he knew it was happening—and he knew that it had been exposed. He at least had the integrity to say he would not tolerate it. Today it has changed—today it has changed.

This is a Government that is in a desperate bid to control a reputation now in tatters. Not content with denying the obvious, not content with defending the indefensible, it releases more reports. Is Judith Collins off the hook? No, she is not. The Department of Corrections is an absolute debacle. It released its report, too.

We know it is all wrong, because this is a Government whose reputation is now in tatters. This is wrong. We know how desperate it is when John Key quotes one passage from the report but refuses to go to the next paragraph. He quotes the passage that says: “neither Mr de Joux nor Mr Ede acted inconsistently with any obligation to the SIS when Mr Ede disclosed this information to Mr Slater for political purposes after being told it by Mr de Joux.” Have a look at the next paragraph, Mr Joyce. Have a look at the next paragraph, because this is what it says: “The events in issue in this inquiry do, however, demonstrate the lack of any steps by the NZSIS to ensure that its reporting relationship to the Prime Minister was consistent both with the requirements of security and with its obligations of political neutrality.” There it is in a nutshell.

The Prime Minister does not care that the departments under his control act with the absence of political neutrality, because this is a Prime Minister—the most politically driven and maliciously driven Prime Minister we have had in a generation—desperate to cling on to power. He runs a smear machine out of his office. It has been going undercover for 6 years and now it has been exposed. Well, it is all coming to an end. The circus is over. The circus is leaving town.

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: Oh, what a load of rubbish.

Mr Joyce knows. He has been a ringmaster. He has been part of the ring. He knows that it is all wrong, and it points to what we have all known about this Government: it has no ethics and it has no integrity. That is the shameful conclusion that thousands of New Zealanders will now draw. The person they look to, the office we all look to, the Prime Minister’s office—of course there are political elements to it; that is the nature of politics. But here is our responsibility. When we come to this House as MPs, whether we sit on this side of the House or that side, whether we are Opposition members or Government members, whether we are Ministers or just MPs, we have an obligation to our constitution to uphold and preserve the separation of powers in this great country of ours, and this Government has lost the plot. This Government cannot do it.

This Government cannot be trusted to respect the basic principles of our constitution—that the bureaucracy, the Public Service, has such an important responsibility to remain neutral, to give free and frank advice, to do its job, to act in the interests of all New Zealanders, not just the Ministers whom they serve on a time-to-time basis. This Government does not care about that. This Government has never cared about constitutional principle. It stands under a cloud of shame. It is a disgrace.

Those members who have integrity—there are some such members opposite—are now sullied and dirtied by the dreadful, appalling actions of this Prime Minister and those around him. Well, it is time for that to come to an end. Who on that side is going to have the courage to stand up and say to the Prime Minister, John Key: “Enough’s enough—enough’s enough, Mr Key.”? The people of New Zealand deserve better. The people of New Zealand deserve a Government driven by ethics and integrity. Who is going to have the courage?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Got more ethics and integrity than you, any day.

Will it be Dr Nick Smith? He has been kicked out of Cabinet, put back in, kicked out, put back in. He knows enough about ethics and integrity because he has breached it enough times. He is the one. He has got experience. He should step up and say: “You know, Mr Key, I’ve been there, where you’ve been. I’ve acted without integrity, and it’s time to front up to the people of New Zealand.” It is time to front up and say that New Zealanders deserve a better approach. New Zealanders deserve a good, honest Government—just like the chocolate bar. We deserve a good, honest Government, but that is not the Government we have at the moment. We need a Government that will observe the very basic principles of constitutional and democratic governance. And now the Government has been exposed.

John Armstrong from the New Zealand Herald had it right when he said today that this Government has plumbed new depths of arrogance and contempt. And, you know, it would be very easy for this Government to draw a line under it, simply by having John Key stand up publicly and say to all New Zealanders: “I got it wrong. I should not have had a smear machine operating out of my office. I should not have had Jason Ede”—Jason “Two Doors Down” Ede; two doors down from the Prime Minister’s office—“operating out of my office, a political operative, the “black-ops” operator. I should not have allowed Phil de Joux to breach his obligations, his security clearance, to the Security Intelligence Service and to willy-nilly pass national security information around.” The Prime Minister should stand up and apologise and he should say to New Zealand: “I got it wrong. Please forgive me.” Is he man enough to do it? Is he man enough to stand up and say: “I got it wrong. Please forgive me.”? He will not, because he has been in denial. Everything he has said today in this Parliament and the handing-out of the reports of every other disaster this Government has presided over—and it has been back for only a few weeks and it has had three disasters in 1 day already to have to account for. Will he be man enough to say it? No, he will not.

This Government is an embarrassment to the New Zealand constitution. This Government is an embarrassment to the people of New Zealand. We have another 3 years of this to put up with, but I tell the Government this: we are ready to take you on no matter how dirty, no matter how filthy, no matter how grubby. You are in it now—your noses are in it. We know what you are like. We know what you are made of. It is no good—the people of New Zealand want something different and they are going to get it.

This issue concerns the functioning of the Prime Minister’s office and the Prime Minister’s role as the previous Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service. If you go page 7 of the findings of this report, it says as follows under point 9: “The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister made public comments in reliance on information provided by the NZSIS, and that information was at least partially incorrect.” Point 10 says: “The Director and the NZSIS also failed to provide any clarification or correction once the effect of these errors became apparent.” Then, if you go to “Political neutrality findings” on page 8, at No. 17 the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security says: “I did find that NZSIS information was disclosed by a member of the staff of the PMO”—that is the Prime Minister’s office—“to Cameron Slater for political purposes, but that disclosure did not breach any obligations of confidentiality owed to the NZSIS on the part of the PMO staff member.”

If anyone remembers the movie A Few Good Men, they will recall the famous interview where a character called Kaffee was questioning Colonel Jessup on the stand, and Jessup says: “You can’t handle the truth!”. Well, actually, we can, and that is what this debate should be about today. Let us go to this magnificent conversation on page 58. It is Dr Warren Tucker, the former head of the SIS. He quotes Mr Goff: “Can I have a few days, please, to think about it?”—it is to Phil de Joux that he is saying that. Tucker: “I said, ‘Well, I could give you a couple of days’…”. De Joux—who is he? He is the deputy chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s office. What is he doing having this conversation? He says: “Look, Warren”—not “Mr Director-General” or anything else—“I think we should give him some space.” Tucker: “Well, what I said was … ‘I wouldn’t want to leave it much beyond about close of play Monday, but let’s do that. I’ll hold it until then.’ So, I’ve agreed to do that, I want to inform you about that.” And on and on it goes, all the way down.

Then Tucker says, at the very bottom of this transcript: “Yeah, he will in terms of overall credibility.”—that is about Goff—“But anyway, I have agreed to hold it till Monday, and if he still needs another day or two, I will do that, but I don’t want to leave it … Are you happy with that?”. De Joux: “Yeah, I am happy with that.” Tucker: “Very good. Thanks, Phil.”

Then, over the page—this is amazing, actually. It is page 59: “However, the press release …”—this is under point 198—“was in large part consistent with the outcome as understood by Mr Goff”. What it is saying right there is that Mr Goff was telling the truth. It goes on further, in point 199: “The Deputy Prime Minister,”—Mr English, who almost lost his voice in shouting denial today—“following the advice provided by the NZSIS, commented that he thought that: ‘the Leader of the Opposition is going too far in questioning the integrity of a senior and respected civil servant … If you were given the choice, I think you would take a senior civil servant … a man of integrity, I’d believe him.’ ” It is all there.

Now you have got the new person involved, the Deputy Director Relationships, Outputs and Communications for the SIS, and he is having a conversation. This person is having a conversation with de Joux as well: “… is the PM gonna come out in support of Warren,”—“gonna”; that is what he said—“or is what Mr English has said [it]?”. De Joux: “I understand the PM has done media … he has done TV3 … So yeah, Bill [English] had done that on the House run. That will be what most media use … And I would have thought … I had a chat to Warren before and he wants … the word integrity to be in, and I would thought”—I am reading exactly what they said—“that line … ‘senior civil servant … a man of integrity. I believe him.’” The Deputy Director Relationships, Outputs and Communications for the SIS says: “… That’s lovely. That’s really good. OK—that’s great. Thanks.” So who is this man, de Joux? Well, he is the deputy chief of staff of the Prime Minister’s office, and his wife runs the National Party electoral campaigns. This has got an acrid stench about it, surely.

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: It’s outrageous that somebody should run a campaign!

I know that “Big Ears” will not get it, because this is about fact. It is not about fiction; it is about fact. If you go to the point quoted on page 66 today by the Prime Minister—who again was shouting in the House—point 222, this is what this investigator of this matter said: “Had it been necessary, I should also have sought the Prime Minister’s appearance before the inquiry. However, I have found that the Prime Minister’s involvement in these particular events was limited to a briefing given by the Director to the Prime Minister”, etc., etc. Let me ask this question: how on earth could she have come to that finding without asking the principal alleger, or the recipient of it—namely, the Prime Minister—whether he was briefed or not? Surely if this was a thorough investigation, even a constable or a first-line police person on the street would ask the question of all parties involved. As a former policeman, Mr Deputy Speaker, you know full well that this—I apologise for that.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You are not bringing me into this debate.

I know, but, you know, you cannot argue with experience. The reality is that any police person or investigator would have asked the Prime Minister this one question: “Were you advised or not?”, and the inquirer, Ms Gwyn, never did.

💬 Ron Mark: Why not?

Why not? That is a very good question, and it underscores the inference that the security services of this country and certain law enforcers of this country are politically biased, yet they are sworn to neutrality on these matters. But the most fundamental thing about this is if I was responding to this inquiry, I would say: “Because the Prime Minister at all points in time was the political head of the SIS.” That is why you would ask him. Are there allegations that infer that he knew? Yes, there have been countless allegations. So why would you not do the most rudimentary thing? I cannot recall in all my years in Parliament a Prime Minister who has been wilfully indifferent to events happening in his own office and the ministries, like the GCSB and the SIS, that he is responsible for.

Or is he just bone idle and does not care? Or, worse still, does he resort to not stating the facts when they are screaming out there for an answer? I do not know.

What I do know is that the Prime Minister is pushing the bounds of total credibility to claim he did not know. Why was he not interviewed and asked at least one question: did he receive information or not, yes or no? Incredibly, he was not even interviewed at all, presumably because she said: “I have found from other evidence.” Well, how would that be evidence? That is, did she ask Mr de Joux? Did she ask Mr Ede? Did she ask Cameron Slater? Whomever she asked, she did not ask them to name the main man, the Prime Minister, about whom all the allegations are made. So what I want in this urgent debate is answers to why that question was not put to the Prime Minister and who played what roles in, effectively, leaking intelligence to the attack blogger Cameron Slater.

Forget all that—has this got a pattern about it? Remember when it was said that Peter Dunne, a Minister for the Inland Revenue Department, was a prime leak on an intelligence and security matter? What did the Prime Minister say? He said: “Look, I want to believe him, but I really just can’t.” And then there was a second investigation, into Mr Banks and the police report. The Prime Minister’s response was: “I’m not even going to read it.” This was a police report that saw this man seriously before the court, and he is still there now, and yet the Prime Minister did not want to know. On the Oravida scandal, again he said there was nothing wrong—all above board. But in the heat of the campaign, down goes Judith. Apparently, now she is exonerated—not on Oravida but on this other matter. But the Prime Minister still does not know.

Then, of course, you have got the one that is paramount of all. Everybody was involved—the police, the SIS, the Government Communications Security Bureau, the international agencies, and America’s security agencies. The Prime Minister’s office knew about this raid coming up, and so did the Attorney-General. He was a prime informant all the way along and far further back than anybody, including him, has ever been prepared to admit. It will get out. He can smile, but we do now know of meetings that he had, planes that were commissioned out of the United States particularly to see, of all people, him—him. When it gets out, he will not look so flash then.

My real point is that in all of these things, what was the Prime Minister’s offence? [Interruption] I beg your pardon?

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Been at the Green Parrot this morning, have we? You’re more incoherent.

Well, how could you possibly go to the Green Parrot this morning when it is not open? You see, that is the kind of information source that he has built his hitherto very strained political career on.

I have to say that the quality of this urgent debate so far has not actually been that high. It has actually been, I think, a bit of a testament to the fact that the Opposition has been completely disappointed by the outcome of this report.

First up, Russel Norman was, I have to say, in fantasyland—he was in absolute fantasyland. I have read this report, and it bears virtually no relation—no relationship at all—to what is going on inside Russel’s head. It is a dark, dark place inside Russel Norman’s head. But, fortunately, out in the real world the report says nothing like what Russel thinks, and he should go and read it. It is absolute fantasyland from the Greens, and they wonder why the public does not listen to them. They wonder why the public does not listen to them. It is because every time they massively overreach—every time.

And then you have Mr Peters and something about a parrot—although I think, to be fair, that was partly because of Mr Finlayson. Mr Peters is already criticising the inquiry. So here we are, half an hour into the discussion, and it is the inquiry that is at fault. He said the inquiry did not ask the right questions—if only it had asked the right questions. If only the inspector-general had been up to her job, she would have found that, in fact, the Prime Minister was the devil beast. It would have found that the Prime Minister was the devil beast; but, no. So here we are with a critique of the inspector-general.

And then we have the Labour Party. It is the first parliamentary day of the new leadership of the Labour Party. How did the Labour members decide to spend their time? Well, you would have thought there might be a few issues today at question time, perhaps, and that they might have some things to discuss—I do not know, maybe the economy, maybe China, maybe the Korean free-trade agreement, perhaps the United Nations Security Council, perhaps some other issues that might have been relevant to New Zealanders. I know this is a reasonably efficient Government, but there must have been something in the last 2 weeks that they could maybe come up with. But, instead, the new leader of the Labour Party, Andrew Little, “Mr Angry”, decides to spend the first parliamentary day working out his anger yet again on a rerun of the Dirty Politics allegations of the election campaign—which were so successful! They were so successful at the time, and now they are back again. When will they learn?

You would have thought that perhaps with a new leader they might move on to something else; but, no. As well as “Angry Phil”, we have “Angry Andy” now. They are prosecuting a report that does not back up what they say—a report that has no smoking gun of political interference, no unexplained ordinance of political partisanship. It actually does not stack up with any of the claims. In fact, the report clearly states: “I did not find any indication of collusion by or direction to NZSIS over the request.” I note that it goes on to say that the disclosure of information “did not breach any obligations of confidentiality owed to the NZSIS on the part of that PMO staff member.” That is it. That is what the inspector-general says. The rest, with respect, is flannel from the Opposition.

So we move on to another issue that comes out of this inquiry, which is a little ironic: the handling of the report. So this report was released at 10 a.m. this morning. That is fair enough, except that a selective view of this report started to appear in the media yesterday afternoon. How was that? I thought all participants had been subject to a confidentiality order. In fact, I think they were all told that “You cannot disclose or discuss matters raised with you as part of the inquiry. This order is expressed to continue in effect until advised otherwise. I have now revoked the confidentiality order from 10 a.m. Tuesday, 25 November.” So who breached that order? Well, it was one Phil Goff who breached that order.

The inspector-general said at her press conference this morning: “I should note at this juncture that I am very disappointed that details of the report were disclosed to some news media yesterday while the report was with affected parties and under embargo. Those parties were subject to express confidentiality orders made under the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act.” I continue the quote: “The premature disclosure of some details was grossly unfair to others. Some of the coverage was not accurate. For the time being, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the unfairness caused to other affected parties. I will be looking at what steps can be taken, both in the context of this report and future reports.”

That is the most ironic thing—the most ironic thing. The parliamentarian who complains that information has been used for political purposes against him has been found guilty of doing the exact same thing in the release of the report. What a clown—what a clown. And it was also a political mistake because he did it over the top of the announcement of his new leader’s new line-up—the beginning and dawning of a new day, and “Angry Phil” could not wait. He had to get his oar in—

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Once or twice you might expect people to fling a few things across the Chamber. This member has, repeatedly throughout his speech, been referring to members by other than their actual names, which is a clear breach of the rules. Once or twice you might kind of think “Oh, whatever.”, but he has been doing it repeatedly throughout his speech, and there has been no caution or sanction from you at all.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Speaking to the point of order—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not need any advice in respect of this matter. The debate has been very robust. I take the member’s point that the reference has been repeated, but there have, as the member has noted himself, been a number of references by nickname or other superlatives to various members. The points are noted, but the Hon Steven Joyce will resume his speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. That is interesting in itself. That is ironic. Some would say it smacks of a double standard, but let us be fair: it is not the first time. We can all recall—I was not even in the House—a time in 2004 when one parliamentarian used a confidential Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade note. He released it to make a political point—he released it to make a political point. That was what he did. And yet apparently, when this Government does not release information to make a political point, that is somehow bad, and yet for Phil Goff it is OK. That is actually the issue.

💬 Hon Annette King: Why don’t you concentrate on the report, Steven?

Well, I will concentrate on it. The allegation from the Opposition this afternoon was that a political smear machine was operating from the ninth floor. Well, there was. It was called the Helen Clark Government. Ask Peter Doone about that, because that is how Labour started: smearing Peter Doone from the ninth floor. That is a ninth floor smear machine; it is not what we have today—it is not what we have today.

This Government set up the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. This Government acted where no other Government has to create more accountability for the Security Intelligence Service. This report is clear. The Security Intelligence Service made many mistakes, and the director of the time made mistakes. They were bad mistakes, and they should not have been made. The current director of the NZ SIS has apologised to Mr Little and Mr Goff, and has apologised to the Prime Minister for the inaccuracy of the information and the way it was handled. And that is correct, but it is not correct for the Green Party to make the most outrageous slurs on the Prime Minister of this country and this House this afternoon when it is not remotely backed up by the report. The Greens are relying on New Zealanders not reading the report and actually accepting their ridiculously fabricated view of things. That is appalling—that is what is appalling.

The appalling behaviour of Phil Goff and the way he has treated this report, in express contradiction of the instructions from the Inspector-General of the Security Intelligence Service, shows that the real dirty politician in this is one Phil Goff.

When John Key is protecting his own interests, he is not working in the interests of all New Zealanders. When John Key stands up and defends his own interests and his own political future, he is not standing up for the interests of New Zealanders or for the democracy that he has pledged to serve. What he does when he defends himself against these very serious findings by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is he completely dismisses his role as a servant of New Zealand’s people—an upholder of the democracy that has been fought for in this country and by others. What we saw today from John Key and his behaviour in the House and the disgraceful personal attack by particularly the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service is that John Key and his people are here to protect themselves only, and the rest of New Zealand can be damned. He has shown utter contempt for the security of our national intelligence services, for the parliamentary democracy, and, again, for the people of New Zealand.

What we really saw today was John Key treating this serious issue of a major abuse of power—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Why don’t you apologise to Rebecca Kitteridge?

Here we go. We can hear the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, Chris Finlayson, no doubt making more personal attacks, as is his wont.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Did you hear what you said today, you disgusting creature?

Mr John Key has shown today that he—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I apologise for interrupting the member. I just want to say to the honourable Minister Chris Finlayson that anything that I said today was not disgusting, and I think that he should, if he is going to interject in that manner, make sure that he follows the rules of the House.

John Key has shown today that he treats this place and the public service role that he has as some kind of game where you score points for being the trickiest—not for being the most ethical, not for upholding high standards, but for being tricky.

Well, let me say very clearly that our democracy is not a game. We are not here just to win at any cost. This is about serving the New Zealand public, not mocking them. It is not OK under any circumstances for John Key, or any Prime Minister, to run a “black-ops” scheme from the ninth floor of the Beehive, no matter how tricky he thinks he is or how much he tries to bat off questions in the House. The public of New Zealand deserves significantly better than that. They deserve answers, not sleights of hand, and a Prime Minister who upholds the integrity and the ethical standards that New Zealanders expect from that office.

For all the dispute around the findings of the inspector-general’s report, what is very clear from the report is that John Key’s office was engaged in a deliberate smear campaign and it would use political information provided to it from Government agencies as critical to New Zealand’s security as the SIS for party political purposes in an election campaign. Steven Joyce tried to stand up and do this, and so did Bill English. No doubt others will as we go on. You simply cannot stand here in this Parliament and tell New Zealanders that that is ethical behaviour by John Key and his office. He did know. He employed Jason Ede precisely for that purpose—to run smear campaigns out of the ninth floor of the Beehive. John Key allowed Jason Ede to use secret email and phone accounts to dig dirt on political opponents and to attack them during the election campaign. Not only that but he used information that was received by John Key and by his office through the SIS. The adviser then destroyed those records. The adviser destroyed those records. It is set out in the report. John Key says that is OK. He is quite relaxed about that behaviour of his own staff and his own office.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security found that staffers in John Key’s office were using SIS information for political purposes. John Key thinks that that is perfectly fine and that that is a fine ethical standard for him to maintain. The inspector-general found that Jason Ede used SIS information to tell Cameron Slater what to ask for in an Official Information Act request; that Slater and Ede were on the phone together when the Official Information Act request was written; and that Ede had even drafted up a blog for Cameron Slater about the Official Information Act request. So the Prime Minister employed Jason Ede to write blogs for Cameron Slater. That is the level of disgraceful standard that the Prime Minister allows and accepts in his office. The people of New Zealand paid Jason Ede’s wages to write draft blogs for Cameron Slater, to dig dirt on political opponents, and to misuse information provided by Government agencies to the Prime Minister for party political purposes in an election campaign. John Key says that that is OK. For John Key, that is a fine ethical standard to maintain in his office. So despite the desperate spin that we are going to hear from National—and the members are trying all sorts of distraction techniques today, and we will hear more, probably, over the next few days. We heard some of the faux outrage today, as well, from National members.

The inspector-general confirms a serious abuse of power by this Government, by John Key, and by his office. The report vindicated Nicky Hager and his most serious allegations in the Dirty Politics book. During the recent campaign, John Key said that the events that were outlined in the book were “baseless allegations”—he used that quite often—but the inspector-general’s report shows that the Prime Minister was wrong to say that they were baseless allegations, and confirms that the most serious allegation in the book is actually true. Yes, John Key operated a “black-ops” out of his office. His own staff were involved in that. He gave approval for that. There is no way that those people could have operated like that in his office if he did not approve of those actions.

This is a huge abuse of power. It is not a political game. It is an abuse of the most powerful office in the country. It was first uncovered by Nicky Hager in his book and has now been confirmed by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

John Key is denying it. We all expected that he would, and that he would bluster, as we saw in his behaviour today. He has not treated the issue with any degree of seriousness. He has not addressed the public on the core issues, about the ethical standards and the integrity that he expects out of his office. He said, instead, that it is contestable that his deputy chief of staff got an SIS briefing on 25 July, and that it is contestable that the information was passed on to Jason Ede, who then talked to Cameron Slater to write an Official Information Act request. The Prime Minister is now saying that the findings of the inspector-general in her report are contestable—the findings of fact that she made.

Her findings were based on interviews with the Prime Minister’s former deputy chief of staff, who is quoted in the report as saying that he wished that Ede had given the information to a real journalist and not to Cameron Slater. Slater’s and Ede’s phone records were used to determine the facts of these matters, and John Key yet again says that this information is contestable.

It is absolutely a game spin that John Key is playing. He is not being honest with the public of New Zealand or treating them with the respect that they deserve. This is an issue that deserves a direct and sincere communication from the Prime Minister, not the spin and game-playing that we are seeing today and will no doubt continue to see.

It also raises concerns about whether this culture of grime that is coming from the Prime Minister’s office is bleeding elsewhere. What we have got now is in two elections we have had the directors of the SIS interfering in the election campaign—first of all, Dr Warren Tucker with the allegations that have now been proved accurate by the inspector-general in failing to meet his political neutrality requirements and allowing information to be used for party political purposes by John Key in an election campaign in 2011, and then again with Rebecca Kitteridge making statements defending the Prime Minister’s office when those allegations were raised in Nicky Hager’s book, before the inspector-general’s findings were completed.

If this is the culture that John Key allows in his office, of practically zero ethical standards and no integrity, of course it is going to bleed through into some of those major agencies and the Public Service, if that is how they think they need to deal with John Key and his people. Of course there will be this interference. We must be protecting the Public Service from this kind of political grimy culture that is coming out of the Prime Minister’s office.

We have said over and over that the Prime Minister should step aside while a royal commission is undertaken into the full allegations. The Prime Minister needs to make a clear commitment to the public of New Zealand that he takes this seriously, because time and time again the allegations have been proved true. It is about his integrity, it is about the ethical standards that he employs, and over and over we are seeing John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, failing New Zealanders, acting in his own interests, and, instead, allowing New Zealanders to suffer this continual abuse of power. Thank you.

What we have just heard from the Greens is a totally fictional narrative on the report that has been released today. It was a total series of smears on upright and honest public servants, and on, frankly, the most honest Prime Minister we have ever had in this country. I think it is disgusting that Metiria Turei would get up and smear the reputation of Rebecca Kitteridge, a public servant who has given great service to successive Governments—served under the Labour Government as Secretary of the Cabinet, served under this Government, and continues to serve. I just think, frankly, that it is behaviour that is beneath the dignity of this House, when the co-leader of the Greens comes in and makes statements like that.

What has been clear in this report is that, actually, there was no political collusion. All these things that the Greens are alleging did not happen. I will quote directly from paragraph 17, where the inspector-general says: “I have not found any political collusion by or direction of the NZSIS in its disclosure of information or any unauthorised disclosure of information by NZSIS staff, as has been alleged. I did find that information was disclosed by a member of the staff of the PMO to Cameron Slater, but that disclosure did not breach any obligations of confidentiality owed to the NZSIS on the part of that PMO staff member.” So there it is—not the greatest day ever for the SIS. But, actually, to try to smear the reputation of the Prime Minister is completely beneath what people expect of members of Parliament.

The one thing, though, that has emerged today—and the member of Parliament has pretty much admitted it—is that the report, which appeared at 6 o’clock on both channels last night, was released early by Phil Goff. There is no question about it. He said in the House today that no one had a copy of the written report, but by doing so he actually admitted that he had read that report and then he went and leaked it to Television One and TV3. You would think that surely Phil Goff would not have done that—surely not. But he is guilty. He has not refuted that claim today. I challenge him to get up and tell the House that he did not speak to journalists yesterday about this report, because he knows he did.

Why we know this is actually because Phil Goff has got form in this area. I would say this is about the fifth incident, at a casual count, of Phil Goff being party to privileged information that he has then gone and released. You will remember the “gone by lunchtime” episode. Phil Goff was in there with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials. What did he do? He leaked privileged information. What did we have more recently? We had a coroner’s report that Phil Goff went and leaked to the media. It was the report into the death of a soldier in Afghanistan. It was under a suppression order. The police looked into it. Phil Goff is on a police warning. And now, with this most serious breach, Phil Goff could actually face a year in prison, and actually I think that might teach him a thing or two. And then there was the instance where a former staffer from Phil Goff’s office when he was Leader of the Opposition, went off to work at the State Services Commission. Suddenly, miraculously, a copy of a Cabinet paper emerged into Phil Goff’s hands and he was quoting from it in Parliament, but then it emerged that his own staffer had stolen that paper.

The common thread through this is Phil Goff. This was back in the days when Phil Goff really cared—back in the days when he was still dyeing his hair, when he was still doing the John Travolta walk. But now he has given up on it. He has decided that he is just going to cause mayhem. Last night, on Andrew Little’s biggest day of his parliamentary career, when he was revealing his line-up, Phil Goff decided that he would wipe the new leader off the front page and the leading article of the news by going and leaking this report. He knew exactly what he was doing. Now he is going to form the nexus of grumpy former leaders sitting there at about Nos 14, 15, 16, and 17—David Cunliffe, David Shearer, Phil Goff—who are going to wreck everything. Phil Goff has no moral backbone. He knows he has leaked this. He is up next. I challenge him to get up and say: “I did not speak to a journalist yesterday.” And then I challenge him to say it outside the House. This is serious for Phil Goff. We are talking a year in prison for Phil Goff, and, actually, that might not be a bad idea. Thank you.

I just want to say one thing. When someone stands up in this House and exposes Don Brash and the National Party as having lied through their teeth about New Zealand going under the nuclear umbrella again, my responsibility as a member of Parliament is to expose that lie. I did not leak it. I stood up in this House, on that side of the House, and condemned the National Party for its hypocrisy and its lies on that occasion, and I was right.

I want to say that I very much welcome this report. Why do I welcome this report? Because this report upholds my credibility and integrity against the former Director of the SIS, Dr Warren Tucker, who was found by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to have behaved unfairly and unprofessionally, and to have released inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading information. I accept the apology—the unprecedented apology—that the SIS gave to me this morning, but I want to know whether one National member of Parliament in the House today has got the decency to stand up and apologise for mouthing the untruths that were represented in what the former director of the SIS said. You have the report; the House has the report. It shows that the director lacked integrity—a comment that I never made about him at the time but which is exposed abundantly in this report. Those members accused me of lying when I was telling the truth, and not one of them has the decency to stand up in the House today and apologise for what they did.

The second thing I want to say about this report is that it exposes John Key, as the Prime Minister, as having misled this country for 3 years by saying that his office had no involvement with leaking material to Cameron Slater—to Whale Oil. This report makes it absolutely and explicitly clear. Jonathan Coleman shakes his head and says no. The inspector-general says that the SIS information was disclosed by a member of the staff of the Prime Minister’s office to Cameron Slater for political purposes. This is in the report. I am reading paragraph 17. And then there is paragraph 9, Mr Coleman, if you want to wait and listen to it. He does not like the truth. It says that the information received from the SIS was used by Jason Ede, a senior adviser in the Prime Minister’s office, to assist Mr Slater in making the Official Information Act request. Yet for 3 years John Key has told this country that his office had no involvement in sending that information to Cameron Slater. I want to know from John Key whether Jason Ede and Phil de Joux lied to him about that involvement and that is why he misled the country, or whether it was the Prime Minister himself who was not telling the truth. I think the country deserves that.

The next debate in this House is the debate to extend the powers of the Security Intelligence Service. All last week Prime Minister John Key said that this should be approached on a non-partisan basis. He said that the security and the safety of New Zealanders should not be politicised, and yet John Key’s office took information received by Phil de Joux, who got confidential information and was regularly briefed on confidential information, and used that material to launch a smear campaign on a political opponent. I say to the Government: for God’s sake, have the decency to own up, say that you misled the public, apologise for doing it—like the SIS has already done—and give us an undertaking that this National Government will not continue through this term in Parliament to use SIS security information to launch smear campaigns against people. They are smear campaigns, in this instance, that the inspector-general said have no foundation and said that it was the director of the SIS who misled, was inaccurate, and was unprofessional.

As the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, I acknowledge the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, especially her eight recommendations, and I have every confidence that the director, who I think is a professional and exemplary civil servant, will see that these recommendations are implemented forthwith. I believe that it is under way already. As L V Martin used to say: “It’s the putting right that counts.”

For the benefit of the Greens, I would say that L V Martin was a Wellingtonian who used to sell washing machines, but they would not know much about those because I think they prefer to wallow in filth, as illustrated by Ms Turei’s disgraceful question this afternoon. If she has any decency, she would come back to this House and she would apologise for the foul attacks that were made on a person who, as I said, is an exemplary civil servant, and I am sure Labour Party members would acknowledge that she is as I have described in that way. I do exempt specifically James Shaw from those vicious criticisms, because I think he is a man of integrity. I say to him that the sooner he is the leader of the Green Party, the better.

I want to set out what this report actually found, because there were mistakes. They were serious mistakes and they do need to be addressed. The findings first related to the release of information: that the SIS disclosed incomplete, inaccurate information, and that is not good; that the then director and the SIS itself failed to clarify matters when they should have; that the SIS was inconsistent in the way it dealt with Official Information Act requests and that its process for dealing with them was inadequate; and that documents were, however, released to Mr Slater and others that were not properly declassified. So that was very important and I do not diminish that these are errors that need to be addressed, but they are errors none the less.

The second bunch of concerns related to political neutrality findings, and it is very important to emphasise that the inspector-general found no partisan political motive on the part of the SIS or its directors—no partisan political motive. But, because of the way matters were handled, it called into question whether section 4AA of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Act had, in fact, been complied with. A number of recommendations that have been made address that issue because it is extremely important that political neutrality never be questioned. So that is an important matter and does need to be addressed. It is a duty on the director—not the Minister but the director—to ensure that he or she consults regularly with the Leader of the Opposition on these important matters. It is incredibly important that the Leader of the Opposition has confidence in the director and is able to discuss these issues, because they are issues that are too big for party politics.

And, thirdly, in relation to propriety, the inspector-general found that the director and senior staff of the SIS failed to realise the gravity of the situation and the potential for political exposure, and I think that that was really probably the most serious error. Mr Tucker, who I am happy to acknowledge in my dealings with him was a good and professional man, at least had the guts, as it were, to come out today and say that he had made mistakes. His successor said we are going to get on to them, and that is as it should be.

But there have been a number of extraordinary claims today. I do not propose to talk about the Brothers Grimm fiction that was peddled by Dr Norman today, or the incoherent contribution, as we expect, from Mr Peters, but I do want to refer to what Mr Robertson said, because he is a person for whom I have some respect. He said, hyperbolically, that “John Key and his office have used State intelligence agencies as a political tool.” That is a very, very serious allegation, but it is not borne out by the evidence. Indeed, I say to him with the greatest of respect and affection that it was a sloppy accusation. The report, in fact, said exactly the opposite. As Mr English said, if poor old Mr Robertson had paid more attention to detail, he would not have gone into the leadership announcement last week thinking he had Mr Twyford’s vote and that he had won it.

So I have emphasised and acknowledged that mistakes were made. They need to be addressed. But they were not the mistakes as characterised by contributions this afternoon, and I think it incredibly important that when we are dealing in this area we address the facts. At the risk of sounding like Thomas Gradgrind—whom I am sure you, Mr Assistant Speaker, will remember from your days of reading Hard Times—facts matter, and that is incredibly important.

The other thing I want to talk about is that this is actually a very good day for democracy because, whether the Government liked it or not, at 10 o’clock this morning the inspector-general released her report—we had no say over the timing—on the very day we want to debate the foreign fighters bill. We had no say over the timing or the content. What has happened as a consequence of the reforms of last year is that the inspector-general’s office has been greatly strengthened and she has the ability to proactively commence inquiries, and that is exactly what she did in August this year.

But it is very interesting to go back to 2013, when these reforms were being debated. Russel Norman claimed in the first reading debate that “the role of the Inspector-General would not work because she would not be an officer of Parliament”. Mr Goff addressed me in the Committee stage and said: “So, Attorney-General, you are telling us to have confidence in an inspector-general who will be appointed almost solely by the Prime Minister … That is why I say, Attorney-General, that your assurances will not carry much weight with the people of New Zealand and certainly no weight with the people on this side of the Chamber.” So they were the comments that were made. The office was denigrated and the ability of the inspector-general to act independently and make these sorts of recommendations was questioned, but the fact of the matter is that that is exactly what she has done. She has acted independently, she has acted strongly, and she has made a number of serious recommendations. As the Minister responsible for the agency, I give this House my unequivocal undertaking that I will be very anxious to see that those recommendations, which are ultimately the responsibility of the director, will be enforced as soon as possible. So I think it is a very good day for democracy that we have the inspector-general making those recommendations.

I am concerned about the disrespect that was shown to her and her office by the person who leaked the report. I say this as Attorney-General: I consider that the sorts of politicians who break the law by leaking documents or breaching suppression orders—be they National, Labour, or Green—behave in a way that is at the expense of the system itself. All members have to be ultimately respectful of the system, and it is certainly not something that one can make a joke of.

Mr Goff made a very important contribution towards the end of his speech. He rightly said that the Prime Minister had talked about the need for bipartisanship. We have gone out of our way in relation to the bill that is shortly coming up to ensure—or do our very best to ensure—that that can be done and I am looking forward to working with Mr Little and Mrs King and other members of the party on these issues. As I say, they are too big for partisan debate. I think I said in my Address in Reply debate speech that at least the two big beasts of politics, the Labour Party and the National Party, have to have a common view on this stuff. Judging from the contribution—the juvenile and dreadful contribution—of Ms Turei today, I cannot expect anything better of the Greens, but I believe that National and Labour can work productively on these matters.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.